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The Six Hats, Six Coats: A Methodology

2008/02/11 — grant czerepak

I had the chance to have a very rewarding email exchange with John Zachman regarding his framework and mine. John has come out with a new version of his framework which you can find here. A key point is John has confirmed my framework is also a methodology. Below I attempt to lay out the groundwork.

1. All human systems can be viewed as having six networks called “coats”:

Green: Cause (Motive) – the goal network

Blue: Observer (Person) – the social network

Yellow: Energy (Function) – the process network

White: Mass (Data) – the inventory network

Black: Space (Node) – the location network

Red: Time (Event) – the temporal network

2. Each of the coats has six states of development called “hats”:

Green: Revise (Entities) – the conceptual network

Blue: Relate (Relationships) – the contextual network

Yellow: Report (Attributes) – the logical network

White: Record (Constraints) – the physical network

Black: Ready (Definitions) – the spatial network

Red: Regulate (Manipulations) – the temporal network

This gives us the following framework:

3. The Six Hats, Six Coats framework is fixed and consequently a methodology. This is because the Six Hats are fixed by definition and consequently so are the six coats. The following structure:

Can also be expressed:

The resulting framework stresses the importance of each of the six coats hierarchically as well as the importance of the six hats hierarchically. It should also be noted that the relationships between the coats are many to many and the relationships between the hats are many to many.

The foundation concept is simple, the coats are the six major parts to a system, while the hats are the six major stages in creating the system.